The ISMB conference provides a general forum for disseminating the latest developments in bioinformatics. ISMB is a multidisciplinary conference that brings together scientists from computer science, molecular biology, mathematics and statistics. The venue for the ISMB meeting alternates between North American and non North American sites. ISMB2001 will be held in Copenhagen, Denmark. The locations of ISMB 2002 and ISMB 2003 will be North American and non-North American respectively. The goal of the ISMB meeting is to bring together biologists and computational scientists in a focus on actual biological problems (i.e., not simply theoretical calculations). The combined focus on "intelligent systems" and actual biological data makes ISMB a unique and highly important meeting.